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thepeoplesrecord:

Prison Labor Exposed: From Starbucks to Microsoft - A sampling of what US prisoners make & for whom
May 21, 2013

Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor.

The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the UnionCorrectional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”

And Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens).Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup “entirely consistent with our mission statement.”

Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips.

In Texas, prisoners make officers’ duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.

A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with “Made in the usa.”

Open wide: At California’s prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.

Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, “Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.”)

On call: Its inmate call centers are the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for gop congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.

Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have “produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)” and “wiring harnesses for jets and tanks.” In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.

Full article

Hmmm….under these circumstances, having a large slave, oops I mean prison population is advantageous.  What an “original” idea!

Damn, it is one thing if this was about rehabilitation and helping people gain skills and get jobs when they leave prison.   Maybe pocket away some money in an account for use when a man or woman gets out of prison.  At least you could argue some type of “win/win” scenario.  Investment firms like Fidelity Investments fund companies and organizations that administrate these types of “programs.  I do not think that is what is going on here.

 It is not clear to me, at all, that rehab and helping people get back into the workforce is what is intended or going on.  I have a hard time believing that inmates net any money or receive developmental assistance that translates to smoother re-entry into non-prison life.  My mind is open and I will keep researching, but this just sounds like re-legalized slavery to me.

Yes, and the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution clearly spells out the intention. It’s absolutely disgusting how comfortable our society has become with this. It’s sickening.

I fucking hate this country

I may get some hate-mail for my beliefs but I’m going to share them: I don’t think we are obligated to train prisoners or pay them wages for any work they do. If they make any money and the prison lets them keep it, that’s really charitable. They are already costing taxpayers TONS of money and they have committed crimes against us in the first place. Therefore, I think their wages should go to help cover some of the costs. Most of us don’t get free college or paid for internships, and definitely don’t get free housing and food. I know our prison system is far from perfect, but I also feel like the US is too lax in how violent criminals (serial killers, child molesters, rapists, etc.) are treated. We say “no cruel and unusual punishments” yet many times these people were exactly that towards their victims. It doesn’t seem fair to me.

I also understand we do have over-harsh/long sentences for drug possession versus financial crimes (which often cripple many people’s lives), so I do feel in other cases the sentences should be lessened. Overall though, I am not going to be upset that people in prison are getting paid anything at all for doing work they do.

You obviously have a problem with empathy. You’re making about 5 different false assumptions about WHO is in prison right now, and WHY they are there.

Obviously your apparent blind faith that people in prison are DEFINITELY GUILTY (of something, I’m sure), is incongruous with your observation (link to the Steubenville rapists lax sentence) that often SOME people receive overly LAX sentences.

Maybe you should be doing some reading about WHO EXACTLY is receiving overly LAX sentences, and WHO EXACTLY IS RECEIVING OVERLY HARSH sentences, and maybe then you’ll be able to make some goddamn sense of the world, instead of paying attention only to information that confirms shit you already decided was true.

And you should provably get all the facts on this before you start deciding shit about how prisoners are treated, since you obviously don’t know much about prisoners other than what your mama told you about “teh bad menz”.

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knitmeapony:

scooterpiebanana:

grrrl-riot:

I saw this post among the slew of comments on this Planned Parenthood post regarding the decision on the after 20-week abortions ban in Arizona. 

It was nice to see a conservative man standing up to the anti-choice bullies on the page. 

So to become pro-choice Republican Catholics just need to personally know someone who brought to term a baby who died painfully shortly after birth. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/07/22/361020/—The-Only-Moral-Abortion-Is-My-Abortion

tastefullyoffensive:

[bigredratchet]

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